


Aftermath

by StakeTheHeart



Series: Sacrifice [2]
Category: Victorious
Genre: Gen, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-21 00:09:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3670173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StakeTheHeart/pseuds/StakeTheHeart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In an alternate reality where each could have been the survivor, this would have been their eventual fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath

_~/Tori/~_

I sat there, waiting for my tears to slow but they didn't. They continued to flow over my cheeks and drip off my chin to land on the stiff body I still held in my arms, unable to let go. After Jade's passing and the murder of everyone I called a family I managed to call my dad, although I didn't think he could properly understand me through the tears. I was a mess and all I wanted was for the people I loved to come back. I wanted Jade back most of all. She sacrificed herself to save me. It was the ultimate sign of her love for me and now I would never see her again. I would never see any of them. They were gone. My dad arrived with his partner and quickly removed me from the premises while the other officer assessed the situation. I didn't want to leave Jade but they forced me to, dragging me until I was back at my childhood home.

They didn't want me to be alone at a time like this. They of course tried to comfort me but get a statement from me at the same time. They wanted to know who killed them. I told them everything. Every little detail spilled from my mouth as I relived the horrible event. They didn't believe me. Why would they? But when I was adamant about what happened, screaming at them that it was all true, they threatened to have me taken to a mental institute to reform me back into what I once was. Couldn't they see that none of this mattered? That nothing good could come out of any of this? I wasn't some toy they could just fix. My soul and heart were broken beyond repair. Did they not see that?

My parents wouldn't allow it anyway so they packed up and decided to live with me, probably hoping that I would get better. I just wanted to be home, to be in my room, surrounded by all that I had left of them. I also wanted to be alone but they wouldn't give that to me. Now that everything was reported, my family buried, and I was back home, I was devastated. I was hit by wave after wave of depression. I didn't want to feel anymore and became numb. The worst part was all the pity and coddling from my parents. I knew they meant well but I just wanted to be alone. I kept thinking that all I had to do was be a little more firm with Jade. I should have told her how scared I really was and I was sure she would have called it off. But I didn't. I didn't and now everyone was dead.

After two months passed of me either lying in bed or standing at the window with a blank stare at the backyard where we had our mini party before driving to our doom, my parents decided enough was enough. They wanted to clean out the rooms to try and make a new start. If their stuff was gone then they felt I could move on as I was already clinging to the house. I begged them not to; that it was all I had, but they didn't listen.

Slowly they began taking apart the memories and the emotions that came with it. Robbie and Cat's room was the first to go. I cried in a ball at the foot of my bed for a day, hugging Mr. Purple and stashing Robbie's acoustic guitar. A few days later it was Andre and Beck's room. That hurt more. Andre and I were so close. I fought to keep his keyboard and Beck's truck. It was his baby and meant so much to him that I couldn't let it get sold off.

When they got to my room I didn't let them touch a damn thing. Everything needed to be right where it was. I realized I was mostly passive aggressive this whole time but when it came to preserving all that was the love of my life, I flipped. I fought at them tooth and nail and they had no choice but to leave it. Jade would not be wiped from this house. She deserved a spot here forever. No one would take that from me.

A year passed me by and yet I still didn't move. My parents returned to their lives so stressed out that they started paying a home nurse to take care of me and the house. Physically, I was there, but mentally, I wasn't. I was always thinking of the past, then the horror show would flash through my mind, and then I was back to the happy times. The nurse was such a talkative woman and I gave her props for dealing with me. She told me how the neighbor's kids kept calling me names and spying on me. They saw me standing at the window all the time but I didn't care. I would continue to live here, no, survive here. They could do all they could to keep me alive but the fact was, I didn't want to live anymore.

My friends were the light of my life and they were all snuffed out. My internal ray of sunshine had frozen over, my heart turned to stone. I didn't care about anything anymore. Nothing mattered to me besides living out my days in my room surrounded by the last pieces of them that I could cling to. I would forever be the crazy, mute, hermit that those kids talked about, but I wasn't looking to change a single thing. I never had any plans to live past that night anyway.

* * *

_~/Jade/~_

Like all those horror movies she loved, Jade was the lone survivor. She had always thought that being the survivor was a good thing; that the evil, death, and doom didn't get them, but she was wrong. She knew it in her heart that being a survivor was pain and agony, knowing that her family were slaughtered and she was left to bear the burden of reliving that over and over again. The worst part was losing the very person who made her who she was today. She burst into her life and spun it around, driving her crazy before capturing her heart. Tori was dead and it was all her fault. The girl who gave her peace of mind and tempered her rage was no longer alive.

Why in the world did she make that dare? What was she trying to prove? She was being stupid, like she always was when it came to pushing people. If she hadn't tried so hard to prove it wasn't so bad then none of them would be dead right now. They would all be home, most likely fighting over what to do. She would have Tori in her arms, warm and gentle, not this cold and hard body. Her tears ran out hours ago, draining with her heart and anything else that broke her down. She didn't want to feel anymore. Without Tori she couldn't go on. Without Tori she was nothing. Without Tori she wouldn't be able to stop the instinctual rage from manifesting within her and taking her to breaking point.

She mechanically called the one adult who was there for her more than her own parents, David Vega. He came with his partner and comforted her as well as tried to keep himself together while his partner took notes. They tried to get her to talk but she only told them of the true evil. She had already resolved to not speak anymore after that. She didn't need to and she didn't want to. When they realized she was closed off to them they decided to remove her from the house. She fought them, refusing to go. She couldn't leave Tori. With a little more restraint than they thought they needed they managed to get her out.

She didn't answer any questions and didn't respond to anything they said. She was just a shell of the person she was, a ticking time bomb waiting to explode if the right buttons were pushed. Because she expressed no want to return home and her parents wanted nothing to do with her, she was taken to a mental facility where they cared for her.

She was pretty tame and automatically accomplished necessary tasks but stiffened into an unreachable concrete wall the moment anything concerning the horrible event was mentioned. She had no more tears to cry over anyone but was usually seen curled up on her bed or in the corner of her room, sobbing and muttering about her being the one who should have died along with late apologies to Tori, her lost love. Anyone who dared to bring up Tori quickly learned to never do it again. The first doctor to try and get through to her got his fingers broken. She attacked so fast he couldn't get away without being injured. They wisely put her in a straightjacket every time they took her out from that point on. Should the topic of the half Latina arise again they didn't want a repeat of her out of control violence.

The only other casualty involved someone who had stopped in to drop off her food. They idiotically taunted her, thinking she wouldn't react to anything but the taboo of speaking Tori's name. He was wrong, and Jade swiftly took a spoon to his eyes and a fork to his throat. They were both plastic but she made it work, intent on showing him the unbelievable amount of pain she felt. She was sedated in order to calm her down.

She was little more than a savage animal as years passed. She didn't use words, just grunts and growls. The security around her heightened once more while doctors tried in vain to bring her out of her animalistic state. She ignored them, she ignored everyone. She didn't want to get better. This torture of remembering all she had only for it to be torn away was her punishment for guiding the ones she loved to death. It was all her fault and she was well aware of it. She knew her fate would be to rot away in this place, because the tests and questions wouldn't stop.

She couldn't help but think that people were stupid, humanity was stupid. They didn't accept the pure evil that hid in the shadows, picking them off one by one. She had always been a little on the dark side and knew there had to be some malicious creatures out there waiting to do them harm, but she never thought she would be one of those idiots she made fun of in the horror movies. She never thought she would be the cause of her family's death. She was the worst patient the facility had ever seen in a long time and she would forever be known as the aggressive worn soul that had been tormented into primal insanity.

* * *

_~/Cat/~_

She had faced some pretty twisted mental instabilities in her family since a young age but Cat didn't let it bother her. Her brother was already out of his mind and she just learned to roll with it. She was a caring, sweet, soul and was always the first to help out. She didn't like conflict of any kind which included violence. It scared her and she always had to find her happy place to escape its scary clutches.

Being the lone survivor after the death of her closest friends did something to Cat's already fragile mind. She wasn't naïve, but chose to look at the bright side of things to avoid any pain or sadness. Pretending to be under her bed and imagining pretty unicorns always seemed to do the trick, but not this time. This time she couldn't run from the horrors she had witnessed, her friends slaughtered right before her eyes.

Robbie had given his life to keep her alive. She should have admitted she liked him long ago, when he started to take an interest in her, but now it was too late. They had so little time together and now he was gone. She missed him dearly, all of them. She called the cops and ended up getting Tori's dad, Mr. Vega, she liked to call him. He cried over his lost daughter, looking down at her unmoving form next to Jade's dead body. They fought all they could together but there was just no escaping what had attacked them.

Cat tried not to ever think of bad things, let alone something that was purely evil. She shied away from all those gory movies Jade liked to watch. It was just too much for her. Sadness alone weighed heavy on her so anything more completely broke her. She cried, but her defense mechanism to block it out soon took hold. She once again searched for her happy place, found it, and clutched it tight. It was her only way to survive the event. With her mind unable to be reached her parents had no choice but to admit her to the same mental facility that her brother was at. They didn't interact with each other either as they were both lost in their own separate worlds. They now had that in common.

There were a few times when the doctors talked to her that she would surface, only to speak of what she saw, whimper, sob, and then fall back under the self-induced fog of forgetfulness. They couldn't reach her but they still tried. Cat spent her days wandering the halls of the facility. She wasn't a bother. She was more of a living ghost, unsettled and lost, unable to get back what was taken from her. Some claimed to have seen her talking to someone but no one was there. She would stop walking and an empty smile would spread then she would talk like there was someone there. Names were dropped that they think might have been the friends that were killed in the terrible ordeal that was the straw that broke the camel's back, in other words, her mind. She held long conversations with her invisible companions and even pretended to interact with them. She never included anyone else in her activities so no one had to humor her and talk to them too. She was perfectly happy all on her own.

Sometimes, when she was alone in her room, usually when it was time for bed, she would let herself sink into that dark corner of her mind. She would see the images and feel the unbridled terror. Those nights she couldn't keep it back and would hurt herself in her attempts to be free of them. In the morning when they checked on her they would find poems about the family she missed and have to patch her up while trying once again to talk to her but she was already gone every time. There was no one home. She was an empty house, just as their house now was until it was sold off to another person.

Cat was fine living in her synthetic world because she saw the smiling faces of her family there at all times. They helped her to believe that everything would be ok as long as she saw them there. Plus, allowing her mind the freedom to leave the plane of reality gave her to ability to talk with them. She quickly came to call them ghosts, the spirits of her dead friends who were now visiting her whenever she needed them. The doctors were sure she thought they were real in that aspect at least. Who were they to tell her any differently? That was what made her happy, and because they could not snap her out of it, they let her be.

Now the once joyful and hyper girl known as Cat was replaced with a more vacant version with all the components of the girl she used to be while lacking that warmth. There was no saving her from the safety of her mind and her parents resolved to leave her alone too. She was just like her brother now, only maybe, slightly worse. He still talked to others once in a while. She was the quietest patient with passive insanity coming and going as often as her mind did, forever lost.

* * *

_~/Andre/~_

Seeing the blank faces of all that he cared about didn't go well with Andre at all. He was always known to let his emotions get the best of him. He went all wonky in the head and couldn't relax until he utilized music to calm him. It had always worked that way. Now that he was surrounded by the deaths of all he knew he didn't think it could all be fixed with some music. For once, his normal escape would provide him nothing. He was sure it would do nothing but give him even more reminders of what he had.

After the drama of that day was long behind him it still haunted his thoughts, Beck's last moments at the top of the pile. He tried to invest his time and attention in his songwriting but living in a house that had been filled with noise and music of all kinds was driving him crazy. He had to do something to stop the horrific memories from overrunning him. He had to sing and play as he always did. It had to help. It just had to. He started out playing his favorites but quickly realized that it wasn't helping. He grew frustrated and paced, wondering what to do now. He went back to work and tried there but all that came out of him were depressing notes of pain and suffering, loss and regret.

He wasn't one to force bravery. Heck, he was almost as cowardly as Robbie sometimes. He had a gut feeling that going to that house was the worst idea and yet he didn't fight it. He was the driver after all. Almost every day he was sent home for his melancholy lyrics and told to lighten it up, come up with something poppy and upbeat like he had done before, but he just couldn't. He played what he felt and tried to get it out but maybe there was just too much to sift through? Maybe he wouldn't ever be able to get it all out and he would forever be a wonky mess. He knew he might lose his job soon if he couldn't produce one less depressing piece, and soon.

So, to combat that, he sat down at the very piano he constantly played at the Vega household. It was for Tori. It had always been for Tori, so when she moved, it moved with her. Although Andre cleaned out the house for the most part he kept a few things from each that really mattered. The piano was one that he and Tori connected over. He sighed heavily and covered his face after brushing a hand over the keys. So many memorable times with his muchacha played out right here on this bench. He held back a sob and let his fingers relax on the keys.

He took a deep breath and tried to bring the good memories to the forefront of his mind, hoping that more will inspire him to write better songs. His fingers followed his thoughts, and before he knew it, he was going back to that mini party they had before their life literally went to hell. Landslide, a favorite of all of theirs but more so for Jade and Tori who sung it all the time. They had sung it again that night and it stuck with him, feeling the way they sung like it was their emotions in the form of sound. They were always like that. He let the sad smile come to his face and played through the song to the end. It left him with an echo of something he hoped meant that it had helped. For now, he just had to wait and see. He returned to the sound studio to come up with something similar to Landslide. It was almost as slow and seemed to be another let down but the lyrics came to him and it turned into one of happy reminiscence.

It was safe to say he came up with something better than he had before but it still held a note of sadness so when he went back home he tried again. He played the song and again that feeling returned. It was pleasant but out of his reach. He wanted it. He wanted to have it and keep it with him but it kept fading away. The next day he created a song full of love and loyalty. He had been thinking of everyone again when he wrote it. He was congratulated for the effort and everyone felt he was on the road to recovery. But then he returned home and played the song one more time. The feeling returned but this time he would keep it. He knew where it called to him and he was going to go there, even if it meant leaving all this behind. None of it mattered if it meant he would be in a better place away from all this pain. He wanted his friends and family back.

He finished the song with a flourish and then stood up from the bench. He picked it up in his arms and took it with him outside where he set it down under the tree they usually sat under. He moved the chairs they used out of the way and then left to get what he needed. When he came back he set up his makeshift stage and stood on it, ready for his last performance. He sung the words to the song that started it all, the one that made Tori shine in all their lives and turned his life into something worth living. She brought them all together and now all he wanted was to be with them. The song ended when he stepped off the bench, the only sound left being the creak of the branch overhead.

* * *

_~/Robbie/~_

After living through the horror of seeing his friends die one by one, Robbie was eerily quiet about the whole ordeal days later. Yes, he cried over Cat, the petite and lovable girl who saved him, and the others who were his family for most his life, but that passed. He returned to society but lived in a smaller apartment as far away as he could from the house he had lived in with his friends. He didn't want to see it ever again.

He spent his days avoiding anyone he could, only talking when he had to. After work he would retreat to a spare room that he converted into a workshop. Wood, paint, and other materials littered the area. He let no one in his house, but should a maintenance worker need to inspect anything they were never allowed even close to it. Robbie kept it locked at all times. He spent the majority of his time in this room, crafting what he termed in his head, new friends. His old friend, Rex, sat in the corner, overlooking his work. He had put aside the puppet a long time ago but Rex became a part of him once more, effortlessly inputting his opinions like he had never left. The urban accented puppet also went right back to verbally smacking him around. He had then questioned Robbie why he didn't just bring his friends back. It took a few days for Robbie to figure it out, but when he did, he didn't stop until he had them all back.

He started with Cat, rendering her features perfectly in wood. He knew her face like the back of his hand and gave her that cheery smile he liked so much. Next came Andre, the carefree musician that took him in when he was being severely bullied. He made sure to include joints in the fingers so that he could play instruments. He worked on Tori and Jade at the same time, unable to see one without the other. They were a perfect match after all the denial was worked over. Jade was mean and scary without Tori, but with her, she was oddly polite and nice. Tori was always a beacon of positivity for them all and he liked her the minute she showed up. Jade needed that pleased smirk and Tori needed fully functioning brows to portray her ever fluid facial expressions. As for Beck, well, they weren't really close but he looked up to the laid back actor. He wanted to be Beck, as most did, and have girls all over him, like Beck had. Especially after he and Jade moved on. He was a chick magnet.

Robbie diligently recreated them all and placed them on the desk Rex sat at. He cleaned up but kept the room full of supplies so he could fix up his new family whenever they needed it. He would often come home and marvel at their likeness, patting himself on the back and admiring how real they were. It was like preserving their very essence along with all the memories he had of them. He never wanted to think of that awful night all that time ago. In fact, he erased that event from ever happening and, according to him, it never happened. His friends were still here and he would take care of them. If he wasn't working he was talking to them, interacting with them.

There were days he took them out in a wagon, knowing that they loved to hang out. It was some of the best times he had with them, especially when they got into weird adventures and had to get out of ridiculous situations. People gave him funny looks or considered him a complete freak. Children tried to play with the hand crafted puppets but he wouldn't let them, claiming that they weren't toys to be played with, they were people. Parents would promptly take their child away. He didn't care. He had his friends and nothing else mattered.

It wasn't a problem until the day his car broke down and he had to take the subway to and from work. He had taken to carrying his friends in a large backpack, Rex thrown in to complete the set. He had taken a seat in the empty subway car, the late hour cleaning out a lot of passengers. A man sat across from him, reading the paper. He glanced at Robbie but did a double take when he saw him take out the puppets and make them talk to each other. He was proud with his ability to sound almost exactly like his friends.

Sometimes he would even try out the mocking tone Jade used on Tori. He almost always ended their fight with a suggestion to kiss and make up. It was even fun being Beck for once or talking in that purely Andre way. Cat stayed sweet and innocent in his mind. The man's brows creased as he witnessed this and then made the decision to comment, a direct insult to Robbie, as he had made the fatal mistake of calling them puppets.

Suddenly, without warning, Robbie was seeing red. He gave the man a cold stare, set aside his friends with their faces turned away, and advanced on him. The man was so shocked he had no time to defend himself. Robbie got off at his stop while cleaning his hands of the red staining them on a napkin before pocketing it and walking home. No one called his family puppets. They were real.

* * *

_~/Beck/~_

The sudden death of so many people at once put Beck, who was normally calm, in a state of constant unrest. He had been the survivor for one reason and that reason was Andre. He had fearlessly traded his life for Beck's and that was why he was still here. After he left the death clouded house with the help of the police he returned to the gang's shared home, thoroughly traumatized. He hated when his emotions grew too strong for him to handle. He didn't like when he didn't have control, which was why he was strangely held together when he was deemed ok to return back to society.

To any passerby he was still the calm Beck everyone knew. The fact that he had seen the brutal murder of his family didn't seem to faze him at all. His best pal? Nope. His annoying but kind companion? Nope. His carefree ball of hyper activity? Nope. His most trusted friend who was the only girl that never obsessed over him? Nope. His first true love who had been won over by the previously mentioned? Nope. Nothing could break the wall he hid himself behind. He went back to work and life, determined to forget. He felt like he could move on as his career began to take off, but slowly, he would notice the changes.

People would skirt him, feeling uncomfortable. There was no trust in their eyes. He was too robotic, too tranquil. No one was that unfeeling. Sure, when he took to the stage or was on camera, he was a wellspring of emotions, but they were all perfect replicas of the real thing. His wall had kept out the bad but also blocked out the good, and it showed. Since he lived alone and constantly lost new opportunities at friendships, he had nothing else to do but clean out the house. He didn't want any more lingering memories and worked to take it all out. He only paused and suffered a bout of pain when he came across Jade's possessions.

Tori had once told him that she told Jade to keep anything Jade had of her time with Beck. It might not have worked out between them but they parted mutually and were still good friends. There were happy memories there. Beck didn't think Jade would keep it but it looked like she did. Who was he kidding? Tori could get Jade to do anything. He missed them all so much and his heart broke all over again as he looked through the box of old memories. Jade had kept another, bigger, part of her relationship with Tori. That he politely put aside and didn't look through it.

Once the house was swept clean of the past in any form he took to unknowingly wallowing in his grief that had forced its way through. He may have put up a wall but he neglected to realize that it was a wall made of glass. It was thick, and held back what it was supposed to, but it had been cracking. Finding those things that Jade kept cracked it further, making it fall to pieces shard by shard.

The first time he remotely thought of self-medication came when he was shopping and passed a shelf full of various alcoholic beverages. He bought some, telling himself it would help ease the pain and his thoughts. He continued to work and drank at home with his meal. The days sped by and soon he was drinking whenever he could while the pain just got worse, torturing him. He drank more, even drinking without eating. He spent days drunk and eventually was kicked out of every gig he landed. He built up a bad reputation and was essentially blackballed. No one wanted him. He was a sham of his former self. With his career in ruins and his own mental stability weakening he kept drinking. He blacked out a lot and lost track of time. With no money coming in he was in debt and losing things but he didn't care. He didn't want to go on anymore. Everything he had was nothing if he didn't have those friends he called family.

So, he scrapped up all the money he could find, spent it all on alcohol, and then locked himself in the big, painfully empty, reminder of a house. He took a seat and drank a bottle for every memory that came to him concerning the now dead and gone people he held close to his heart. He only barely remembered puking it all back up a few times but he kept going, not stopping until he either finished it all or stopped the memories from coming. He chugged and threw up, and chugged again. He was wearing down now, drinking on autopilot as he saw their faces in his blurred mind.

He couldn't get up now, losing the ability to do anything but keep drinking. His body was numb and his mind was dimming. He didn't know how long he had left but he was welcoming the void that would take him away to see his family again. He had a single bottle left now, but when he tried bringing it to his mouth, his body finally gave in. His hand dropped, the bottle smashing and soaking the floor. His eyes closed and he fell asleep, getting his wish to join them on the other side.


End file.
